KENTUCKY COLONEL MICHAEL MORAN

Kentucky governor Andy Beshear on August 20, 2024, commissioned award-winning numismatic author, lecturer, and researcher Michael F. Moran as a Kentucky Colonel, a distinction recognized as the highest honor awarded by the Commonwealth. The Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels defines such a commission as "recognition of an individual's noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to our community, state, and nation."

Mike Moran's work is known in Kentucky and his influence extends well beyond. He is a managing partner of Valley Lumber, a major building-products supplier based in Colorado. He is also active in the oil and gas industry. Among his charitable and community activities, Moran is former chair of the Advisory Board of the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, and he has served as Treasurer, Trustee, and Executive Committee member of the Theodore Roosevelt Association.

On the federal level, he is currently in his third four-year term on the U.S. Treasury Department's Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee. The CCAC was established by Congress to advise the Secretary of the Treasury on the themes and designs of all U.S. coins and medals. As a senior member of this Committee, Moran serves as an informed, experienced, and impartial resource to the Treasury Secretary, representing the interests of American citizens. Most recently he served on a subcommittee advising the United States Mint on themes for circulating coinage celebrating the nation's 2026 semi-quincentennial.

In a letter to Governor Beshear, retired Whitman publisher Dennis Tucker wrote: "Michael Moran would make an exemplary ambassador for the Commonwealth of Kentucky—as he already has been for many years. Through his philanthropic work he embodies the tradition of service on behalf of others, and as an author, educator, and volunteer he commits himself to sharing knowledge as a way of building community and understanding."

Author, Researcher, and Numismatist

Knowledge and education are important aspects of Moran's numismatic calling. He regularly shares his research with many of the nation's numismatic associations, publishers, museums, and institutions. His Numismatist article on the survival of the San Francisco Branch Mint during the great earthquake of 1906 won the American Numismatic Association's Heath Literary Award. His books have earned recognition and awards from the Numismatic Literary Guild and the Professional Numismatists Guild.

Moran has authored two books published by Whitman Publishing, with a third in production and expected to debut in 2025. His groundbreaking 480-page masterwork Striking Change: The Great Artistic Collaboration of Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (2008) studies one of the most dramatic and productive relationships in American numismatics. It explores the renaissance of United States coinage at the beginning of the twentieth century. Moran's research took him to numerous museums and archives, where he was able to shed new light on old "conventional wisdom" about presidential politics, urban design, monumental sculpture, and other areas of American life and culture. His next book, 1849: The Philadelphia Mint Strikes Gold (2018), won the Numismatic Literary Guild's "Best Specialized Book" award for U.S. coinage. It chronicles the trials and tribulations of the United States Mint in the first half of the nineteenth century and the tremendous impact that the 1848 discovery of gold in California had upon that institution and the nation as a whole. The third book in the series, When Coins Were King, reveals how silver and gold coins came to drive American politics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In it, Moran also provides fresh insights into the relationship of Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

One of Mike Moran's greatest contributions to numismatics was the 1921 Silver Dollar Anniversary Act. Over the course of two years, he and current ANA president Thomas Uram worked with Congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky and Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming. They wrote, lobbied for, and ultimately secured passage of the act, which was signed into law on January 5, 2021. The legislation ordered minting of new coins celebrating the 1921–2021 centennial of the last mintage of classic Morgan dollars and the first year of the Peace dollar. This program has introduced a new generation of Americans to two of the nation's most popular classic coins. Millions of the new silver dollars, recreating the old designs and eagerly sought by collectors, have been produced since 2021.

 

CCAC members Mike Moran (left) and Erik Jansen at Mint headquarters, September 27, 2018. Moran holds a new Cumberland National Seashore quarter dollar.

Volunteer and Philanthropist

Mike Moran has given his time and effort to many arts- and history-related nonprofits. He has lectured on the subject of numismatics and American history at the National Arts Club in New York City. He has volunteered as a speaker at the annual convention of the congressionally chartered American Numismatic Association, and has written cover articles for The Numismatist, the organization's official journal. He has also shared his research with the American Numismatic Society (New York).

Along with his wife, he has endowed the Dee Dee and Mike Moran Education Abroad Scholarship at the University of Kentucky. This scholarship is open to students who study German in a university-sanctioned program in any German-speaking country for a summer, semester, or academic year. He has recently initiated a similar scholarship for engineering students at his alma mater, Purdue University.

"I've known Mike Moran personally and professionally for almost twenty years," Dennis Tucker said. "I know him as a successful businessman, a savvy and clear-eyed advisor to the U.S. Treasury Department, and a dedicated researcher and writer. The Bluegrass State should be proud to number him among its most celebrated numismatic sons, just as I'm proud to have been his publisher over the course of my career."

Mike Moran's official commission as a Kentucky Colonel is a fitting tribute to his selfless commitment to education and philanthropy. Beyond that, it is a call to greater service for everyone who admires and supports his important and ongoing work.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
DENNIS TUCKER NOW A KENTUCKY COLONEL (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n18a20.html)
INTRODUCING COLONEL JEFF GARRETT (https://www.coinbooks.org/v26/esylum_v26n03a10.html)

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